


Going Down

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Prompt Fics [66]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Evil AU, Evil Nick Stokes, Gen, Whump, all hurt and no comfort, s13e01: Karma to Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: What if Nick had gotten that chance to end McKeen once and for all?
Series: Prompt Fics [66]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540795
Comments: 14
Kudos: 7





	Going Down

**Author's Note:**

> for an anon who asked me to write a fic where Nick is the whumper, with the whumpee of my choice. had this stuck in the idea bank for a while, to be honest, and I hope it gives Nick a much needed catharsis as I continue to make his life a living hell.

A warm, alcohol infused bubble pops in his mouth, its spread dissipating like the suds of carbonation he had just drunk less than an hour before. His hair feels out of place, floppy, it’s a bad time to consider it, but damn does he need a haircut. Perhaps he’ll shave it again, once he gets out of his time-out. 

His eyelids are cleavers to the hamburger meat that surrounds his eye socket. He lets out a dispassionate groan when his overstretched neck rolls in just the wrong way. His knuckles, bumping up against each other, are already bruised purple, his skin teasing to completely split apart to reveal the bones that had previously impacted against the brick wall that was Mr. Clean’s jaw. 

He chuckles at the thought that he had bested the man on the magic eraser that tried to erase him for good.

“Told y’all it was gonna get disorderly.”

A dribble of blood oozes from his busted lip, spotting onto the floor as his feet are dragged across. He’s not afraid to admit that yes, he had been slapping on a bit of weight recently, but right now if it means adding to the already dead weight of his drunken stupor as he’s escorted by two breathless officers, then it’s worth every added number to the scale.

“You should consider yourself lucky,” Hank hisses into Nick’s ear. “We could have dropped you off two towns over, where you’d be known as just another drunken idiot found on the street.”

“Y’know…Knew a guy named Hank once. Cheated on my best friend,” Nick pauses to let out a loud, obnoxious belch in the man’s face, “...and even he wasn’t as much of a pin-headed prick as you.” 

He spits directly into the bald officer’s eye, before falling into a burst of giggles as he’s roughly handed--well, more like shoved--to Officer Mitchell, who pulls Nick back by his shoulders, as he leans forward, itching for the next round.

“Sober up, Stokes,” Hank sneers as he wipes the saliva off his face. “The amount of friends you have around here is shrinking as quickly as your manhood.” 

Nick lunges forward, nearly falling onto Hank’s shoe as Mitchell loses control and drops him. The older officer shouts for the other two to leave before the situation escalates further, but not before they have a good laugh at Nick’s expense while he writhes side to side, his hands cuffed behind his back. 

“I ain’t finished with y’all! This ain’t over! Y’all are cowards!” Nick shouts in a messy slur. His forehead starts to throb, the pressure on his stomach doing nothing to settle the vile nausea that dares to escape. He can’t tell whether he wants to push this sensation down with another beer or sleep it off at this point, not that he can do either at the moment, anyway. 

“Alright, Nick, that’s enough--Hey! I said, that’s  _ enough!”  _ Mitchell shouts as he wrangles Nick off of the ground. He pushes Nick against the wall, “Listen to me, I like you, Stokes. I like you a lot. You’re one of the best damn CSIs and I ain’t gonna let you fall into the same swamp that has drowned so many others, you hear me?”

“I’m not a CSI no more. Quit,” Nick sniffs, tilting his chin up, his eyes stare into Mitchell’s. “So go ahead, toss my ass behind those bars. Got nothin’ to lose.” 

Mitchell studies him for a few moments, offering a curt nod of understanding before he guides Nick down the hall. Nick notices that he’s the only officer present, and Nick seems to be the only deviant around.

“Walkin’ by a lotta empty cells here, Mitch. Y’all reserve the deluxe suit for little ol’ me?” 

“Afraid I’m gonna have to give you a roommate, we’re a bit shorthanded and only have one guard available,” Mitchell announces in a cheeky reference to himself. “He doesn’t like to pace down the hallways that much, got a bad hip.”

Nick scrunches his face in confusion, but as they reach the end of the hall and the cell closest to the exit, he gets his first glimpse of his cellmate.

Jeffrey McKeen.

His previous sense of heaviness turns into a flurry of feathers that soar through his veins, the corners of his lips pull up into a tight smile adorned with blood-bordered teeth. 

His plan  _ actually _ worked. 

Nick of course, knows better than to go and do something stupid like saunter into a liquor store and drink the entire contents, stagger around the streets interrupting traffic, spouting loud-mouthed nonsense and just generally, making an absolute  _ fool  _ of himself.

He knows better than to quit his job, after all he’s been through, after all he’s worked for to make it this far. He’s had more than enough opportunities to throw in the towel, and nobody would have blamed him for it. 

But he also knows that he likely would never get another chance to re-calibrate the scale of justice. Eye for an eye, for all of the lives McKeen ruined with his plague of corruption. For all of the cover-ups and lies and threats. For all of the bodies blasted by a single bullet that pulled the plug on so many lives before their time was up.

_ For Warrick. _

“You two play nice, now,” Mitchell says, as he unlatches the cuffs on Nick’s wrists. He wrings them out, massaging out the bubble wrap pops of synovial fluid as he studies the man who tenses up from his infuriatingly leisurely position on the slab of concrete attached to the wall.

He doesn’t flinch as the bars roll out into a loud metallic slam that seals him in the tiny space with a fellow prisoner. A sound associated with the prospect of solitary confinement manifests with physical boundaries that play a nasty trick on his mind, making him feel as if the walls would close in on him, not to mention the idea that he is no longer in control. He would be told when to eat. When to sleep. No sense of luxury to be found here, either. Only the bare necessities, with a design of functionality over comfort. 

And more than anything, he feels exposed. Isolated behind a near transparent barrier, with ample opportunity for others to come and observe his plight. He dreads to think of how one might even study his behavior as he slowly descended into a madness. 

But right now, he welcomes the confinement because it’s not solitary. He doesn’t care who’s watching, hell, let the whole world watch the spectacle of a man who has nothing to lose fulfill a promise that’s been a long time coming—

_ “I should have killed your punk ass when I had the chance.” _

The first blow lands before McKeen can even anticipate it.

The man’s head knocks back into the concrete wall, groaning while Nick pulls back his fist, flexing his bruised knuckles and shaking out the sting. 

“What’s the matter,  _ Jeff _ , you said you’d clean your calendar,” Nick smirks as McKeen loses his grip on the concrete bench in his recovery, nearly slipping and falling to the floor. Nick can tell McKeen is trying--and failing--to keep up his smug persona, as he tries to stand himself up before Nick simply reaches down and grips him up by his shirt collar, pulling back his fist for another punch that lands even harder as the first one. This time McKeen does fall onto the ground, his fingers hovering over the rapidly forming bruise on his face, his mouth hanging open and oozing blood. Nick uses the wall for leverage as he begins to send kicks to the man’s gut, effectively kneading the stretch of clay into a curled ball marred with shoe prints. 

“Stokes, stop--” McKeen sputters as he spits out blood between kicks.

“Shut up,” Nick huffs with another kick, this time to the man’s groin. He staggers backward as the older man recovers, the room teetering and he can’t tell if at this point, he’s still drunk from the alcohol or drunk from the powerful reigns twisted around his fingers. The initial rush of adrenaline is waning, but something in the back of his head is screaming,  _ “keep going.”  _

“Didn’t know you had it in you,” McKeen laughs through his groans. “But you know...at least I had the decency to make it fast for Warrick...what you’re doing is just cruel…”

“I said, SHUT UP!” Nick shouts, he crouches down and balls his fists around the collar of McKeen’s jumpsuit, they rise up and Nick shoves him against the wall, and Nick hesitates, unsure of what his next move should be. It’s not that he doesn’t have any ideas of what to do, quite the opposite. He’s nearly overwhelmed with possibilities, even in the confines of this four-by-four cell. 

But the longer he waits to act, the longer McKeen’s mouth has to start spewing more words into the fire that’s already spreading rapidly through Nick’s veins.

“You know, this reminds me of our first dance,” McKeen chuckles. 

Except unlike their last encounter, McKeen makes the effort to fight back. Pushes against the bar across his arm, shoving Nick off of him with a rough shove, goading him on.

“But you couldn’t do it then, you can’t do it now, can you? Even locked away in a tiny cell with me, you’re still not man enough to do the job.”

Nick remains silent, though his nostrils flare wide and furious, as he envisions how he might be able to shove him into the bars behind Nick’s back, stick McKeen’s arm through the space and  _ oops, don’t worry, officer, I’ll take care of him for you  _ and just... _ yank  _ his arm in through another bar, looping and twisting the arm out of its socket.

“Then again, last time you almost took the easy way out anyway, hiding behind a gun. Who even taught you how to punch?” McKeen distracts Nick with his quip long enough to send his own fist into Nick’s square jaw. He hunches over to recover, resetting his jaw before he stands tall again.

Nick’s tongue pokes out, licks up the dribble of blood still sliding as a result of his transformation into just another link in the chain of corruption, punished for his non-conformance. He vaguely wonders if Hank and his associate were part of McKeen’s goons, if it wasn’t just happenstance that they were the ones to bring him in, even if that had complied with the plan he had in mind all along. 

A plan which he’s now beginning to re-think, because as he continues to stare at McKeen, with his own busted lip and shiner on his face, he can almost see  _ himself.  _ He considers stopping his release of pent up rage, because really, he’s no better than this monster if he stoops to his level. A level of primal violence, beating down an unarmed man while an  _ officer of the law  _ watches, an observation which McKeen also seems to notice, and why wouldn’t he--he was a cop at one point, too.

“What’s the problem, Stokes, having an audience preventing you from getting it up?”

Nick grits his teeth into a steely, non humoring smile, his eyes darken as he lets out a shaky exhale before his shaky arms use all of the force they can muster to send McKeen back down to the ground, his head impacting the intersection of the wall and bench. He throws his arms up in defense as Nick swoops down, ripping apart the barrier and kneeling on the man’s arms while he starts to pound every inch of his face in alternating punches.

He starts with McKeen’s loud mouth because he is just  _ sick  _ of hearing the man talk, though he still continues to laugh in mocking Nick, and Nick just continues to fume, because  _ what’s so fucking funny,  _ as he feels the cartilage of McKeen’s nose crack under the assaulting pressure of his splitting knuckles.  _ He  _ is supposed to be  _ enjoying  _ this but can’t seem to as the light is still ever present in McKeen’s eyes, unrelenting in the face of his punishment. 

He has to go harder.

The sting of Nick’s own injuries just adds to his fury as he then fills the space of McKeen’s eye sockets with his two splitting fists, pushing down so deep and far that he feels the squish of his eyeballs into the back of his skull. His fists lose their stability, the trunks of his arms start to shake and fold as the roots get sucked into McKeen’s body. He pulls them out, and slaps his head sideways, starts to focus on the man’s ears, though he has to slow down, getting himself dizzy as he tosses his head between his hands like a basketball. 

Panting, he leans back in his straddle, as McKeen coughs and sputters into a loud strained groan. Nick wipes his face, still somehow unsatisfied in his revenge, as

“You know…” McKeen’s voice cracks in a hoarse mutter, and Nick rolls his eyes, looking up to the ceiling as if it can give him an answer to why McKeen is  _ still  _ talking after all he had done to him. “I told them not to pay that ransom all those years ago...what a waste of money...”

Nick’s ears perk up, the opening of a whole new set of wounds unlocking a new level of anger that screams at him to wrap his hands around McKeen’s neck, press down on the throbbing lump of his throat, suffocate him as  _ he  _ was suffocated--make him see the exploding stars in the advancing void of darkness, make him struggle to suck in the small amount of air that he’s offered, make him lose his mind in the crushing weight of the earth threatening to swallow him whole only to be stopped by mere  _ inches  _ of glass. 

Even with his hands around the man’s neck, McKeen still manages to speak words as loudly and clearly in Nick’s head as if they weren’t being squeezed out of his body.

“They should have just let you rot in that hole.”

Nick releases McKeen’s neck, and as the man falls into a fit of gasps for the air that was robbed from him, Nick starts to chuckle without breath, then giggle as his body vibrates, then  _ roar  _ with laughter as he gets to his feet, and walks backwards into the wall of bars that prevent him from rolling on the ground in his crazed fit of hysterics, suddenly feeling as light and carefree as he did when he chugged down that first six pack of beer.

An idea is forming in his brain, a plan so wild and out there and yet so  _ perfect  _ that he just has to laugh because if he plays his cards right, it might actually work.

“M-Mich, c’mere, man,” Nick wheezes, wagging his fingers through the bars and gesturing to the older man who had since taken to the chair in the corner of the hall, next to the emergency exit. “I n-needja ta lemme outta here…”

“C’mon, Nick, I’m willing to look the other way so you can throw a few punches, but I can’t let  _ that  _ happen.”

“Please, I can...I can end this for good…” Nick goads him. “I c-can do whatever you want me to…”

“Bribery, really, Stokes? Looks like the straight arrow is getting a little bent,” McKeen groans.

Mitchell’s eyes flicker from Nick to McKeen, remaining silent in his contemplation before he speaks a minute later.

“You know...I think somebody should go check those cameras, I hear they’ve been acting up a lot lately, turning off and losing hours of footage...I’ll be right back,” Mitchell announces, rising from his chair and lifting up his belt, jostling both his keys and a pair of handcuffs loose from his pocket. 

He doesn’t seem to notice, even kicking them closer to the cell door before he walks away, out of Nick’s line of sight. Nick smiles as he bends down and easily retrieves the tools to his freedom, first taking advantage of McKeen’s subdued state to restrain his hands with the cuffs behind his back, and then unlocking the cell door. 

“I don’t get what you think you’re gonna be able to do, the whole city’s gonna be looking for me. And you, too, for that matter.”

Nick silences him with a quick kick to his face, but then studies his captive and has to reluctantly agree, he has to act fast before Mitchell needs to return in a reasonable amount of time. His shirt’s already ripped, might as well take advantage of the loose fabric. He tears off a strip and wraps it around McKeen’s mouth in a makeshift gag, mainly because he’s tired of the man’s penchant for shit-talking but also because he doesn’t want to risk that he’d tip someone off to his abduction.

He then sighs as he has to remove the rest of his shirt entirely, wishing he maybe had thought of using a shirt as a makeshift hood before he put the cuffs on McKeen’s wrists so he could have used his instead, but then again, he had to give himself a little credit--he was still partially drunk. His mind isn’t in its normal capacity, and that self actualization starts to plant yet another seed of doubt in his brain-- _ Do you really think this is going to work? That you’re going to get away with it so easily? _

Though the soil isn’t fertile enough. He rejects it. 

_ It has to. There’s no turning back now. _

He flips the shirt upside down, pulling the collared hole over McKeen’s head and tying a knot at the other end. He’ll have enough opportunity to breathe through the fabric though he’s not so concerned about the man’s comfort, anyway.

He picks him up, holding him by his arm and gripping the cuffed hands behind his back, he drags his puppet through the threshold and opens the emergency exit door to the outside. McKeen puts up a fight but Nick easily overpowers him and drags him behind a dumpster because he knows their exit would set off an alarm. Better to hide than to run, as they would be easily seen walking around, a shirtless man and one that is obviously being held captive against his will. They were both moving targets and right now, all guns were trained on the shadows, waiting for them to emerge. 

Nick’s anxiety doesn’t settle, even as a familiar figure is the one to emerge from the exit door, his mind still swirling with scenarios in which the game would be up, and he’d be locked away in more than just a holding cell, never to be seen again.

Mitchell looks one way, then the other, seemingly ignoring the crouched, drunk, half-naked man behind the dumpster sitting on top of what might appear to be a dead body, limp in exhaustion from his beating. He answers a call in his radio, giving the “all clear.”

“Must be a false alarm,” Mitchell muses, a bit louder than he needs to, and walks back into the station, shutting the door behind him.

Nick waits a few moments before he springs up and temporarily leaves his prisoner in the seclusion of the shadows. He slowly approaches the corner, sidling the wall as he locates the first vehicle he can to break into and steal--and to his absolute surprise and pleasure, there’s one already running, with apparently no bodies inside. 

And not just any car, but a  _ park ranger’s  _ car. The perfect cover, he can drive without suspicion, so long as he disables the tracking system which would only take mere minutes, and there would most certainly be some tools stored in the back of the jeep--he can already see the outline of a crate through the tinted windows as he approaches. 

He walks swiftly, casually but not without caution, constantly on the lookout for onlookers and not so much out of concern for his physical state--there are always beaten, shirtless drunken assholes walking the streets of Vegas but more for the attention he might draw from walking up to a running vehicle and just straight up stealing it.

In another stroke of luck, there’s a jacket in the passenger’s seat that he quickly puts on, paired with a stetson that completes his disguise and suddenly he feels settled as he begins to work on disabling the traceable GPS, though he still keeps his eyes on the lookout for any passing civilians, or the return of the vehicle’s owner. The car was most likely running because the owner was in the station, presumably dropping off a detainee for booking, a process that wouldn’t take a whole lot of time and Nick knows he doesn’t have  _ that  _ much luck in his life.

He envisions the owner coming out of the station, pulling Nick out of the car, beating him to a pulp before dragging his ass back into the station to get tossed back into the cell, and his fingers fumble faster with buttons and wires before finally, he lets out the breath he was holding in, as he’s certain he can drive this vehicle without it being remotely tracked. 

He pulls around the station, the headlights landing on the squirming body behind the dumpster tricks his mind into thinking he’s rolling up on the scene of a crime, which isn’t too far from the truth, he darkly reminds himself. Before he gets out of his car to collect his victim, he has to take a deep breath and collect himself as he ruminates on that-- _ collecting his victim.  _

He has nothing to lose but time, and so he gets out of his car and preemptively opens the door to the backseat, where he can safely cage McKeen, not that he is likely to escape with the hood on his head and the cuffs on his wrists.

“Stop it!” Nick hisses as he picks the man up, throws him into the vehicle. He slams the door and hops back in the driver’s seat, sweaty hands grip the steering wheel while he stares into the void in front of him. 

_ No. Turning. Back.  _

His shifts into drive. His foot to the pedal, he’s on the main road within seconds and just as quickly as he got on, he searches for the first ramp to the highway to get out of the line sight of the traffic cameras. Even if he disabled the GPS, they can still track the license, and as he continues driving, he notices how every other car seems to be some vehicle of authority. A cop car. An ambulance. A fire truck. Giant SUVs with flashers, not dissimilar to his own vehicle--that he realizes, now that he’s no longer a CSI, is no longer his. All ready for that call, for those digits that identify his vehicle as stolen, ready to just ram into his vehicle and incapacitate him. 

He won’t go down without a fight though. Even if he has to fight everyone he loves.

Even if they no longer love him back.

He keeps the radio on, though every crackle sets a pang through his heart, every word seizes his lungs, as any moment now he knows the call will be made, that ex-Charlie-Oh-Four Stokes is on the missing, and so is Jeffery McKeen. He can hear the rumors spread around the station, around the lab, bets being made as to who’ll land the first punch. He hopes the odds were in his favor, and that he made a lot of people rich.

He can hear Brass’ voice on the radio, calling for his location, growing more furious and worried with each non-response. Going from “Stokes” to “Nick” to “Nicky” with more and more desperation, doing all he can to appeal to whatever sensibility is left inside of him that would stop him from actually committing a murder. 

He can hear Doc Robbins and Super Dave discuss the injuries to both Nick and McKeen’s bodies, replaying what they thought went down before they were stopped by the swift hammer of justice. They don’t give Nick enough credit, unaware that he had already been beaten down before he even laid a finger on McKeen.

He can hear DB discuss the case details with the team, Nick becoming just another suspect--no, not suspected, because they  _ know  _ what he’s done, he’s just another sleazeball waste of a human being that they’re going to lock up and throw away the key. He can hear the disappointment line his voice though it somehow doesn’t bother him. 

But he can also hear Catherine, Greg and Sara tell him to “give him hell!” because they know, just as he knows, that  _ this is what that bastard deserves. _

And that’s all he needs to hear.

He grins as he  _ finally  _ finds the ramp to the highway, after what seems like an eternity spent running from the oncoming storm that threatens to strike him from behind. He presses his pedal deeper to the floor of the jeep, accelerating to quite dangerous speeds that make him feel like he’s on a winding roller coaster. He can feel a disgruntled groan from the backseat as the wheels on the right side of the car lift up in the air, and he laughs wildly as the car almost tips entirely, before he quickly overturns his wheel and he spins out onto the endless highway, inter-cutting the ambient silence of the night with screeching tires. 

There are no other vehicles in sight, no street lights, just the beams of his two headlights illuminating the strips of yellow that chop through the black pavement with no end in sight. No sounds, except the sound of the wind whooshing by as he lowers the windows, feeling the cold night air slam against his ear and freeze the hand that hangs casually out the side of the vehicle. The chatter of the police scanner is cut as he turns it off entirely, approaching the outskirts of the city limits, the anxiety of being caught begins to wane like the beacon of the moon among the crowding stars, but the rush of exhilaration remains.

Nearly an hour into the sobering voiceless silence, having reached a level of stability as the car hums steadily down the straight road, McKeen disrupts the peace Nick was finally starting to enjoy by emitting a loud, strangled groan.

Nick frowns, and turns on the radio, twisting the knob to its highest setting. Loud rock music music blares through the speakers, interwoven with cackles of static that make Nick’s ears feel like they are just going to  _ explode.  _

It reminds him of riding with Warrick.

Warrick. His best friend. The man who would always believe in him, give him that much needed nudge to keep going. The man who always looked out for him, who would pull him back before he walked off of the cliff side. The man who somehow knew Nick even better than himself, at times, knew exactly what he needed when he needed it. 

The man who was the rock of the team, held everyone together, evident with how it all fell apart after his death. 

And he’s also the ghost of the man who sits in the passenger seat next to him, and smiles at him, knowingly. Gives him the nod, the confirmation that yes, it’s time. This is as good of a place as any.

Nobody will find them out here.

Nick drives off of the highway and the vehicle begins to rock between the rough terrain and the miles per hour pushing into the hundreds, and the rage boils inside of him as he thinks of Warrick’s face, thinks of how  _ happy  _ he was that night in the diner, think of the sheer joy and sense of family that was stolen from them all by the man tied up in the back seat. 

He thinks of the times his own life was threatened. Thinks of all the threats, the guns, the blood, sweat and tears and how all of them  _ combined  _ wouldn’t be enough to punish the man who murdered his best friend. 

So he settles for the second best.

He thinks of the dirt that managed to wedge its way into crevices of his skin that were still dried, patchy, picked apart by tiny pincers injecting his body with millions of doses of venom that made him feel like he was on fire. He thinks of the suffocation of entrapment, limited opportunity dangled in front of him and taken away at the turn of a switch. He thinks of the seconds and minutes and hours that melted into an eternity trapping him inside his own brain, replaying his entire life, faults and all on a loop until he made a tearful goodbye to the people he’s let down. 

He thinks of the barrel nuzzled into the bottom of his chin.

The imprint that it left, far after he had been pulled from the earth. 

The trembling finger that was wrapped around the trigger, and mere seconds from pulling it. 

He won’t be able to give McKeen that, either, but he’ll sure as hell make the man  _ wish  _ he did.

The vehicle comes to an instant halt, Nick having slammed down on the brakes just so he can make McKeen pinball within the vehicle, even at the price of his own head slamming into the steering wheel. Doesn’t matter anyway, his head is already damaged. And in the lieu of more alcohol, the impact to his skull brings him back to the carefree stupor he needs to reach as he stumbles out of the car and to the trunk where he retrieves a shovel that had been packed away alongside all the other tools intended for survival, not for some drunken asshole’s thirst for revenge. 

He leaves the engine running, can hear the upbeat old-timey rock music in the distance, taking in the vast expanse of the desert land, no road in sight. He takes his time, he’s got plenty of it, as he maps out the dimensions of the hole relative to the size of the crate that was not intended for a human body to inhabit. 

He slides the shovel’s head across the side of the car, leaving a large scrape on its side, hoping the long, drawn out sound would instill fear in his prisoner before it falls back to the ground and is dragged a few feet ahead of the car. 

Between the beams of the car and beams of the moonlight, he begins to infiltrate the soil, overturning heaps to expose the dark grains unexposed by the harsh rays of the absent sun that had dried out the surface. His fingers splinger from the wood of the handle, sweat dripping out of every pore of his skin. He starts to get dizzier than ever before, after only getting down about a foot deep in the four by four space he estimates that the crate will fit into.

He licks his lips but his tongue is dry. 

He feels nauseous.

His back aches.

He can’t do it.

He can’t.

_ He can’t.  _

He racks his memory that’s littered with reruns of all of his failures, trying to remember if there was water in the trunk of the ranger’s jeep. He staggers over, rummages through the junk he thought he had filtered, and there was no water to be found. He lets out a frustrated groan, throwing out the rope, the nets, the garbage backs and other tools that won’t help him hydrate himself.

But in a secret compartment next to the crate that he worries he won’t even be able to lift out of the trunk, he does find something that might be able to help him. 

A shot gun. 

“Well, now, you know…” he pants in a loud voice as he checks the stock of the barrel. Fully loaded. “I get it now,  _ Jeff.  _ I get why you don’t like to get your hands dirty, it’s really...quite exhausting.” 

He sets the gun against the jeep, and opens the backseat door. McKeen squirms at the sound, the repeating  _ ding...ding...ding... _ of the door open alarm thumping along with Nick’s rapid heart as he pulls the body out of the car, and throws him face first into the dirt. He slams the door shut, nearly knocking the gun to the ground and re-locates the discarded pair of elongated garden clippers to free his hands. As McKeen takes the opportunity to free himself from his hood, Nick quickly picks up the gun and trains it on him. 

He allows McKeen a few deep breaths, the last ones he’ll have, before he jabs the man in the chest with the barrel of the gun, which sends him butt-first to the ground.

“Get up!” Nick barks.

“Stokes, l-listen…”

“Get the  _ fuck up,  _ I’m not asking you again!” Nick sends a quick kick to his side, rolling him over with his foot. 

“Stokes, I can...I can make sure nobody ever crosses you again--”

“Really, you’re  _ really  _ gonna bargain with me now? How fucking stupid do you think I am, you piece of  _ shit!”  _ Nick uses his foot to once again send a swift kick, this time right into the man’s buttocks. As the older man reels in pain Nick bends down and grabs him by the hair, pulling him to his feet. “WALK!” 

“Hard to walk when you keep poking me with that gun…” McKeen huffs. 

“Shut up!” Nick continues to corral his prisoner towards the hole, though their progress is slow as McKeen’s feet drag in front of him.

“You know, the longer you wait to put that bullet in my brain the longer my friends have to find me. And you.” 

“I said--”

“--Cause that’s the difference between my friends and yours, Stokes. Mine actually care enough to get the job done--”

“SHUT UP!” Nick whacks the side of McKeen’s head with the gun, knocking him into the spotlight, the hole mere feet away. The older man laughs as he pulls himself up to a kneeling position, looking up at Nick through his bruised and bleeding face. 

“Oh, I see what you’re doing...You’re gonna make me dig my own grave, huh?”

Nick doesn’t say anything, still breathing deep, every blood cell screaming and shaking inside of him as he just wants this all to be over. 

“Damn right.”

McKeen’s mouth gapes open, but before he can speak, Nick fires a warning shot, mere inches next to the hand McKeen uses to keep himself propped up. The shot booms like a loud crack of thunder in the sky, but nobody else was around to hear it.

It gets the job done,  _ finally  _ seems to shatter the inflated ego of the waste of a human being at his feet, as Nick sees a shroud of fear pass over the man’s face.

“Dig,” Nick growls. 

“And if I don’t?” an ounce of defiance from a man who was living out his execution, that Nick was about to snuff out.

“Then I’ll start breaking those fingers until you pick up that shovel.”

“You’re cracking me up, Stokes, I don’t think you have it in you to--”

Nick stomps his foot onto McKeen’s hand, lifts up the finger and bends it until it  _ snaps. _

“I have  _ a lot  _ in me that you’re gonna find out about if you don’t pick up that shovel and  _ dig,”  _ Nick spits onto the writing man in pain. 

“Fuck you!” McKeen cries out. 

“Dig!” Nick screams back, raising his foot up again to come crashing back down on the older man’s hand, but the man finally reaches for the tool and uses it as leverage to stand up. 

He keeps his gun aimed at McKeen as he finally starts to dig. He doesn’t care that the man is showing the same signs of exhaustion and dehydration that pull Nick’s eyelids down into blinks that last longer and longer with each passing second but he can’t answer the call to sleep. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, but somehow time flies faster than he thought it would, and McKeen’s body seems to shrink into the earth to the point where all he can see is the gray hair sticking out of the dirt like a piece of tumbleweed stuck on a twig. He’s not just panting anymore, he’s  _ wheezing  _ through tired tears as Nick approaches the hole slowly to examine his work. 

“Okay, get out,” Nick nods, before he starts to walk backwards towards the car, not letting the man out of his sight though he knows he wouldn’t have the energy to run even if he wanted. Nick sets the gun down on the bed of the trunk, and pulls the large container of wood in its place, careful so as to not break it as it falls out, and he musters up the small amount of energy he has left in him to push it towards the hole, and just as he calculated, it fits perfectly. 

As McKeen continues to lay on his back, chest rising and falling like a balloon that’s about to pop, Nick uses the shovel to pry open the top of the crate, then uses the tool to roll McKeen down into it, stabbing the nose of the shovel into the arms and legs that are crammed inside the small space.

“Please...please just...end it…”

Nick stands tall, and smiles at the broken man in the box, wondering if this is how Walter Gordon felt.

“Come onnnnnn, Stokes!” McKeen rasps out. “Let me rest...please, just...shoot me…”

“No,” Nick replies coldly. 

“You wanted to put a bullet in me, here’s your chance.”

“Oh, Jeffery, buddy...I don’t think you get it,” Nick laughs as he bends over to examine his helpless victim, hands on his wobbling knees. A mixture of vile and blood threatens to rise in his throat, he swallows it back down. “I said I was gonna make you dig your own grave...didn’t say you’d be dead when I put you in it.”

“No…”

“So go on, breathe quick…”

“No, no, no, no, please!” McKeen begs.

“Breathe slow…”

“Stokes, you can’t do this!”

“Anyway you like...you’re gonna  _ rot  _ here. Okay?” Nick squints through the sweat that pours like a waterfall over his face, but he doesn’t wait for an answer before he returns to his full height, feeling bigger than he ever has before, suddenly awake, and sober and feeling a renewed sense of energy as adrenaline surges through his veins, his heart  _ soaring  _ in utter satisfaction.

Nick slams the lid onto the crate, snuffing out the loud, hoarse scream coming from the dead man’s lips, further muffled as he starts to slam the freshly dug earth back into its place, his smile growing wider and heart beating faster with each heap. The strangled sobs and screams that echo through his ears fade out, any evidence of the missing Jeffery McKeen covered, and Nick’s dastardly secret along with it.

With one final pat, the screams are gone entirely, and he’s certain that the crate had already collapsed in on itself even without his foot pivoting into the ground as if he were extinguishing a cigarette. He allows himself a few moments to sit and rest, watch the sunrise on a new day, basking in the glory of justice, not just for Warrick...but for  _ himself. _

* * *

Clean-up took little to no time at all, all things considered, though it’s not like time mattered at all now that Nick had reached a new state of nirvana in his life. It was easy, too, knowing what  _ he  _ would have looked for if he were investigating the mysterious disappearance of the most corrupt officer that has ever worked for the Las Vegas Police Department.

He vaguely wonders if Greg would one day write a book in it, if rumors would circulate that it was a hit enacted by the mob, and not from a man with a burning desire for revenge that threatened to consume him whole if he didn’t act on it. 

He leaves the car stranded, because it would most certainly be looked for now, if not already, as he spots helicopters circling the desert--or were they vultures?

Somehow he makes it back to the main road before he collapses. 

Somehow he feels his body lifted up and feels the cold refreshment of water splashed on his face.

Somehow he manages to tell the good Samaritan to bring him to the station, fighting against the insistence of a hospital. 

Somehow his savior listens.

He stumbles into the department, laughing at his own inside joke, that nobody even seemed to notice he was gone--or if they did, they didn’t care. He can hear the gossip, and it seems like everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket during the time he was gone, “the city may as well be in a civil war!”

He also hears the ranting of a disheveled park ranger, only identified by a polo shirt with a patch on his chest. 

“I don’t know, okay! I had it running, came in here to book some punk that decided to start vandalizing the park, but because of some  _ stupid  _ technicality, I was stuck in this building all damn night and when I went back out to go get a bite to eat, my car was just...just... _ gone!”  _

Nick walks up to the man, who probably mistakes him for some kind of homeless person dressed in dirt and rags as he places a hand on his shoulder, pats his chest in solidarity.

“Man...fuckin’ sucks, don’t it?” 


End file.
